Wit and Humor of the Bible: A Literary Study

by Marion D. Shutter

In human nature, the sources of laughter and tears lie close together, and the highest literature must express that nature in its entirety. “It is an understood fact,” says Whipple, “that mirth is as innate in the mind as any other original faculty. The absence of it in individuals or communities is a defect.” “He who laughs,” says the mother of Goethe, “can commit no deadly sin.” If it be true as Whipple says, that the absence of mirth in individuals or communities is a defect, then is the absence of it in literature likewise a defect. It is a defect because the literature which omits it fails to set forth all that there is in man. It leaves an important territory unexplored.

On the other hand, the literature which is designed to move and mold men must be addressed to human nature in its completeness. Freighted with destiny, charged with eternity as are the messages of the Bible, they are yet intended to impress men; they are addressed to human faculties in human speech. Whatever the capacities of language for touching the heart and operating upon the will, they may all be employed, though the theme soar to heaven or take hold on hell. The Bible is not an instrument of a single string; it gives forth a thousand harmonies. It is attuned to every note in human nature.

III.

Thus far we have simply dealt with the presumption. The considerations advanced show us what we might expect to find. When we proceed from presumption to actual investigation, our conjectures are verified. There are certainly passages in the Bible which in any other writings we should call Wit and Humor. Since this is the case, our discussion is legitimate, however repugnant the very suggestion may be to the feelings with which we are accustomed to regard the Bible.

Let us take some examples. If we found in any other book such a saying as this, “Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor, so doth a little folly him that is in great reputation for wisdom and honor,” should we not call it witty? Is it not witty as the Russian proverb “A spoonful of tar in a barrel of honey?”

Or consider such sentences as the following: “All the labor of a man is for his mouth, and yet his appetite is not filled.” “As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart.” “Bread of deceit is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.” “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.” “A man of great wrath shall suffer punishment; for if thou deliver him, yet must thou do it again.” In other words, a man of violent temper is always getting into difficulties; you have no sooner helped him out of one than he madly plunges into another. Like the irascible person in the old nursery rhyme, who jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes, he is no sooner extricated, than “with all his might and main, he jumps into another bush and puts them out again.” “Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Can he go upon hot coals and his feet not be burned?” “Wealth makes many friends, but the poor is separated from his neighbor.” “He that passeth by and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears.” If we came upon such sentences in Johnson or Goldsmith, we should say in a moment that they were instances of genuine wit. Let us not hesitate to carry the same frankness of literary judgment to the Bible. When Isaiah characterizes certain ones as “mighty to drink wine and men of strength to mingle strong drink,” does he not use essentially the same reproach that Prince Hal fastened upon Falstaff, “Wherein is he good but to taste sack and drink it?” Who shall say that the earlier satire did not suggest the later? Much has been written about Shakespeare’s indebtedness to the Bible.

Here is a passage of biting sarcasm from Job. We should surely call it sarcasm if we found it in the pages of Robert South. Job is expressing his scorn for those who affect to look down upon him in his adversities: “But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock.” They are “the children of fools, yea, children of base men; they were viler than the earth.” (We have an equivalent expression in “meaner than dirt.”) They are members of the long-eared fraternity. He does not say so in the bluntest form of expression that can be used, and that any one less skillful would have used. Job puts it much more effectively: “Among the bushes they brayed; under the nettles they were gathered together.” “If that is not wit,” says one, “there is no such thing as wit. And yet the commentators do not see it, or will not see it. They are perfectly wooden when they come to any such gleam of humor.”

There is a bit of ridicule in Jeremiah that we should be quick to call ridicule, if we came upon it elsewhere. He is describing the disasters that fell upon the allies of the King of Egypt. “Why are the strong ones swept away? They stood not because the Lord did thrust them down. He made them to stumble, yea they fell one upon another; and they said, Arise, and let us go again to our own people, and to the land of our nativity, from the oppressing sword.” They are defeated in spite of all the promises of the King of Egypt. He does not seem to avail them. His boasts are ineffectual. His disgusted allies depart, flinging at him the withering reproach, “Pharoah, King of Egypt, is but a noise; he hath let the appointed time pass by.” That is to say, according to one paraphrase, “Pharoah is of no account now, he has had his chance and lost it; he has outlived his influence; his day is over; he is not a sovereign any longer; he is only a noise.” Or as Matthew Henry puts it, “Pharoah can hector and talk big; but that is all; all his promises vanish into smoke.” In the same spirit, Queen Catherine says of the dead Wolsey,

“His promise was as he then was, mighty;
But his performance, as he now is, nothing.”

If we found a little sketch like the following in Thackeray, we should, beyond doubt, pronounce it humorous: “All the brethren of the poor do hate him; how much more do his friends go far from him. He pursueth them with words, yet are they wanting to him.” The words of a poor man can not travel fast enough to overtake his rich friends and neighbors. Indeed, Thackeray has drawn such a picture in his more elaborate description of Harry Warrington in the sponging-house, making vain appeals for help to his rich relatives and friends. “He pursued them with words, yet were they wanting to him.” His aunt,—“a member of the great and always established Church of the Pharisees, sent him her blessing,—and a tract!”